Agility and its Benefits at Work

“Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.” – Bill Gates –

The word Agility comes from the word Agile which literally means “Agile, agile, or agile”. Agile is the answer to the very fast changes in today’s industrial world and can be applied in all fields (organization, business, project management, marketing, leadership, human resources, etc.), which are required to be more flexible, adaptable, and fast in make decisions.

This is also driven by the rapid development of information technology so as to make human activities more helpful and easier with the help of technology. To date, there are several terms to describe the rapid changes in the business environment, including:

• VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) and Disruptive Era
• Alvin Toffler’s 3rd wave (1st wave: agricultural agrarian era, 2nd wave: industrial age, 3rd wave: information age and additional 4th wave: conceptual era)
• Society 5.0 (Society 1.0: hunting and gathering, Society 2.0: agrarian, Society 3.0: industry, Society 4.0: information society and Society 5.0: supersmart society)
• Industry 4.0 (Industry 1.0: mechanization and steam engines, Industry 2.0: mass production & electricity, Industry 3.0: Automation, computers, electronics, Industry 4.0: Digitalization, Cyber, IoT and Networks)
• Management 3.0 (Management 1.0: Traditional and hierarchical, Command and Control like a machine, Management 2.0: employees are the main assets but still follow the hierarchy, Management 3.0: organization as a community with shared goals and vision, Agile leadership)

Today’s business moves very fast, innovation and disruption emerge every day. Every organization is ultimately required to be Agile in its operations, in order to continue to excel and be relevant to the times. One of the biggest benefits of working with Agile is the speed with which you act and make decisions. This certainly improves the quality of the company and its effectiveness at work.

Agile leadership practices are exemplified and discussed in “Servant Leadership” by Robert K Greenleaf and “Adaptive Leadership” by Hersey Blanchard and this was also discussed by Mr. Pendidikan Ki Hadjar Dewantoro in his educational motto. Meanwhile, the Agile team has the expertise of “Generalizing Specialists”, where employees have multi skills, capable of having expertise in several fields, not just one field.

Characteristics of an Agile Team include (a) prioritizing customer satisfaction (b) accepting change (c) high collaboration (d) continuous improvement (e) self organization/empowerment (f) high motivation (g) prioritizing team success over achievement individual (h) Simplification-simplifying (i) conducting regular retrospective evaluations.

In addition, Agile is also divided into 2 dimensions, namely (a) Agile Practice (doing Agile) and (b) Agile Mindset (being Agile). Of the two, the most important is having an Agile Mindset. This agility must be carried out by every company and employee, therefore it is important to apply it in order to be able to adapt to any increasingly disruptive business changes.